Music

Back in business

Teen hangout returns 18 months after going dark

All-ages venue the Alley—best remembered as the answer to the trivia question “Where did Panic! At the Disco play its first show?”—has reopened, in the same location but under new management.

Dan Maltzman, a longtime landscaper and father of scene mainstay Ian Shane Tyler (ex-Red Light School District), has signed on as an employee of Family Music (8125 W. Sahara Ave.), which houses the Alley’s performance area, and will head up booking for the 400-capacity room. “I put together a good business plan, and I think we can keep it going for a long time,” Maltzman says. “We have access to the stage seven days a week, where before it was just Friday and Saturday, so we expect to have it booked five to six nights a week. We’re gonna make this place happening.”

Local bands This Romantic Tragedy, Adahliya, 9th & Lewis and The Broadcast officially christened the Alley’s new incarnation last Friday night, drawing just over 100 paid attendees for a show that cost—as Maltzman promises all gigs at the venue will—$10. “Considering it was on such short notice, it was great,” Maltzman says. “We should have two or three times as many people by November.”

The original Alley closed in February 2006, reportedly after parental complaints reached the owners of Family Music. Despite that, and Southern Nevada’s long-standing tradition of shuttering all-ages halls, Maltzman insists he isn’t worried. “We’ll be set up legally, taxed, licensed, insured, what have you,” he says. “I just have to keep the kids from wandering off to the [neighboring] businesses.”

Upcoming bills include: Love It or Leave It, In: Aviate, Briertone and Lost Ocean on October 19; Water Street, The January Sessions, Down By Fire and Killer in Denial on October 20; Lydia Vance, Jr. Anti-Sex League, The Tramlines and Pan De Sal on October 26; and Fletch on December 14 and 15. (myspace.com/thealleylasvegas)